seeking zanity in an inzane world

Posts Tagged ‘deficit’

I don’t typically praise the work of Nobel Prize-winning economists, and even less often two in the same day. But Paul Krugman’s op-ed in today’s NY Times is worth the read, and reinforces the Stiglitz interview (below).

“These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

“The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.”

“The Most important thing for addressing the deficit is putting America back to work,” economist Joseph Stiglitz said this morning in an NPR interview.

Instead of obsessing about deficit reduction, we need to invest in education and infrastructure, which will promote growth and lead in time to higher tax revenues.

As an example, the former Clinton administration official and Nobel Prize winner recalled that government engineers had proposed fixing the levees that protect New Orleans in 2000. They were ignored, until Katrina hit and the floods wiped out large parts of the city. “If we had made that few billion dollar investment we would have saved a couple hundred billion dollars.”

“If we go into mindless austerity,” Stiglitz said, “our deficits are not going to go down as fast as those people who argue for it claim.” Instead, cutbacks will weaken the economy, tax revenues will go down, more people will be unemployed, expenditures for unemployment insurance and welfare will go up, and we’ll be worse off than we are now.

You can’t ignore the deficit, Stiglitz said. “The real question is to address it in an intelligent way: invest in the future and grow the economy.”

Deficit obsession (my words, not his) is driven by ideology. The budget cuts are “designed to cut back on the core functions of government,” he said of the federal debate, but this point could be made about the New Hampshire state budget as well.

“There are some things that we really do need government for,” Stiglitz argued. Rich people can have big yards and live in gated communities, but “most people can’t afford that,” he said. That’s why we need public parks.

The debate should be over what government does, not its size, he concluded. “That’s what we need to have a national conversation about.”

The recommendations from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, released last Wednesday, include some interesting ideas. But they stray from the major factors which drove up the deficit over the past decade. As you and the other members of commission complete your work in the next two weeks, we hope you will focus on reversing tax cuts, decreasing military spending, and ending the recession.

Let’s start with the recession, which has forced millions of people nationwide onto the unemployment rolls. Even with New Hampshire’s unemployment rate far below the national average, 40,070 of our neighbors were not paying income taxes in September, nor were they contributing to the funds for Social Security and Medicare. Even with the economic picture brightening a bit, use of food stamps in New Hampshire has risen every month for the past year. Getting people back to work has to be the top priority of any effort to reduce deficits in the long-term, even if it costs money in the short run.

Today, military-related programs, including operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, account for more than half of the federal discretionary budget, those items that are affected by annual congressional votes. According to the Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of experts convened by U.S. Reps. Ron Paul and Barney Frank, increased defense spending accounts for nearly 65 percent of the increases in federal discretionary spending since 2001. Serious deficit-cutters need to look there for savings.

The defense spending recommendations from Bowles and Simpson, including cutting our overseas military bases by one-third, are a good place to start. The Sustainable Defense Task Force has more, adding up to $1 trillion that can be saved over the next 10 years without harming our fundamental ability to defend the country from 21st-century threats.

The federal tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration are the third major contributor to the deficit and will cost the federal treasury another $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years if they are allowed to continue. While no one wants to pay more in taxes, the wealthiest Americans can afford to see their rates return to the levels of nine years ago. That would reduce the deficit by about $70 billion a year over the next decade.

Some areas should be off the table. Social Security is not in need of a major overhal. Rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid are tied to the rising cost of health care in general and should be addressed by steps that put halth care costs under control.

Our state saw a record number of home foreclosures this year, and personal and business bankruptcies are taking place at a rising pace, despite some positive indications of economic recovery. Unless they can propose a way to cap layoffs, foreclosures and illnesses, the deficit cutters should stay away from food stamps, unemployment benefits, child care, housing subsidies and other programs that aid the neediest Americans.

Senator Gregg, the report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, expected Dec. 1, will be one of your final acts in the U.S. Senate. We hope you will agree that the deficit can be addressed by putting Americans back to work, cutting military programs that do little for our actual defense, and eliminating unnecessary tax breaks, all without cutting into the programs that keep people fed, housed and healthy.

After all, the budget is an expression of our moral values, not just our economic needs.

(Arnie Alpert is New Hampshire program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee.)